Not being "Agressive Enough"

**Cullion** · Posted On: 11/11/2006 4:25pm

Learn to hate the fucking **** you're sparring with. Deeply. Make it personal.

**SuperGuido** · Posted On: 11/11/2006 10:39pm

I remember a discussion I had with a former instructor a few years ago.

We were talking about competing, and I asked why he didn't compete anymore. He said, "To be successful at competing, you need to be an asshole. After a while, I stopped being an asshole, and found it hard to compete."

While many may disagree, I think he had a point. If you want to be successful at competing, then ultimately you need to focus everything on YOUR development and YOUR improvement.

I've met several world class boxers and grapplers, and they all had one of two things in common.

1. An ego that brooks no failure.

or

2. A killer instinct they can "Turn On" at will.

***jnp*** · Posted On: 11/11/2006 11:57pm

Originally Posted by rino86

You know, John Machado did a seminar at my school last night and he actually talked a little about this.

Interesting, I went to a John Machado seminar today. Lots of good stuff.

To the OP: During my time on the mat as a jiu-jitsuka, I went from being an animal on the mat to a style based on pure reaction. Nowadays, I try to favor being proactive rather than purely aggressive in my defense and my attacks. Just understand that being proactive sometimes means being aggressive.

Originally I was going to reply with a typically verbose response, but then I read this:

Originally Posted by JohnnyS

I'm going to repeat myself here, but it's just so easy to waste time in BJJ by not having a goal.

Let's say I'm working on my guard: If all I do is move a lot and annoy my opponent but never actually put him in danger, my guard isn't improving. My guard recovery skills *may* improve, but maybe not. I would develop a better guard much faster if I had a goal such as open guard and said to myself "I'm going to get this grip on my opponent straight away, put my foot in his hip and stretch him out" All of sudden, instead of reacting to my opponent, my opponent has to react to me and to work on getting his arm back, and my foot off his hip. As he tries to do these things, he opens himself up to sweeps and submissions. So while all I'm doing is essentially getting my grips, to all appearances I'm being more aggressive and my opponent is being more defensive.

and thought, 'Thread over.'

**kracker** · Posted On: 11/17/2006 3:42pm

Spend 10 minutes a day looking in the mirror and literally screaming at yourself like a drill seargent. Call yourself a ***** tell youself you NEED to be more aggresive to SURVIVE. Seriously I'm not joking I did it and my agressiveness went through the roof. I'm 5'6" and barely 140lbs and I'm so agressive there are people at my BJJ class who are literally scared of the look I have in my eyes when I fight.

**Das Moose** · Posted On: 11/17/2006 5:22pm

Originally Posted by kracker

I'm so agressive there are people at my BJJ class who are literally scared of the look I have in my eyes when I fight.

That's because you're a fucking nutcase. Calm down.

**Kokujin** · Posted On: 11/18/2006 6:55am

There's nothing wrong with my agression levels in general, its just that , because most of my sparring partners are way more lighter then me, my instructor keeps telling to ease up a little as not to injure anyone. I have a 30Kg advantage(?) over anyone that comes to morning practice, so after several months of holding back, that feeling kind of sunk in and now I'm the frigging care bear, as not to hurt anyone.
In night practice its a different ball game because of the bigger pool of fighters and weights. So normally there and in competition I kick ass. Just a rant.

**PoleFighter** · Posted On: 12/01/2006 6:28pm

I've actually thought about this quite a bit since reading this thread, and last night I think I really saw what aggression was once I rolled with our resident judo black belt. This man has competed in the swedish national team and has been doing competitive judo for over 25 years (although he's switched to BJJ now in order to preserve his knees and back). I figured he would now something about this stuff and I was right. When I rolled with him, I never felt like I was the aggressor, despite outweighing him by around 40 pounds and him starting on his back.

When I tried passing his guard, I never got to the point where I could initiate my favorite passes, because he anticipated what I was doing and kept me in a position where he understood that I didn't want to be, making me weary by just shifting around and faking different moves. When he eventually swept me, I got halfguard, and the moment I had him in it he was already initiating his half guard pass. After he tapped me we rolled again and I managed to get him to turtle, but even there, when he was in what most people think of as a defensive position I felt like he was the aggressor, as I was doing all I could to keep him from regaining guard. Eventually I felt like I had to roll him over in order to advance my position, but because I had been unable to control him while he was turtled, my technique became sloppy and I was the one who ended up on my back. The few times I've actually managed to pin the guy in side mount, I've been so busy just keeping him there by blocking his escapes that I've been unable to advance my position.

The lesson I got from this was the value of staying active, and that you can be the aggressor even when in positions that are not thought of as offensive. Also, aggression has nothing to do with applying lots of force or getting a crazy look in your eyes. It's about being a step ahead of your opponent, thinking faster than he and forcing him to play the game you want him to play. Aggression can be applied anywhere, in any positon.

**triggrhaapi** · Posted On: 12/10/2006 5:14pm

Originally Posted by Spyder230

I train 3 days a week 2 hours a class and I have a hour of open mats once a week.

The hardest thing I found on this subject is what is it to be "agressive". From the responses I am gathering pressing the attack is what I may need to do more of. I am finding that I am taken down more often then most and I do tend to pause between transitions.

I have no fear in being tapped lol hell it is part of training.

It seems that your main issue is just that you're not very confident. You're probably overthinking too much of what you're doing and concentrating too hard on one thing, which distracts you from everything else your opponent is doing. I know this may sound a little cliche but you need to stop thinking and start doing. Start slowly, when your opponent attacks, just react naturally. If you've trained well, your insticts will guide you accordingly.